Role-play techniques have found favor in many parts of the world as a sensitizing tool in working both with young people and adults. It is particularly useful in drawing attention to social changes that must occur in order to resolve conflicts, and to facilitate desired changes in inter-personal relationships. In India, NGOs, for example DESH, have used it extensively with young people in developing lifeskills, such as assertiveness, and in encouraging learners to assume responsibility for their own actions.

For a role-play to have impact, the players need not be adept at acting but they must be comfortable in front of an audience. The facilitator can help by keeping the atmosphere light and by encouraging the participants to identify emotionally as well as intellectually with the characters whose roles they represent. The play can help focus the attention of the audience on critical issues that they have tended to by-pass or to underestimate. However the play will not be truly effective if the audience is treated as passive recipients of messages. In some of the best role plays, one or other of the players throw questions to the audience or make side comments to provoke their reaction and thus become active participants in the process.

For purposes of the present exercise, a picture from a DESH publication had been borrowed and adapted (with acknowledgments) as a contextual frame of reference. The technique used for the Role-Play is projective. Players must identify themselves with the persons seen in the picture and really "live" their anxieties, their loyalties and hostilities, even the slim threads of hope to which they cling.

Purpose:

To create awareness that the epidemic is already depleting critical sections of the labour force which cause disruptions in industrial production with consequent loss of output, loss of income for the workers and their families and loss of profits for the industry.

To engage participants in reflecting on the steps that can be taken to alleviate the situation at different stages and levels.

Time: One Hour

Materials:

A large poster (preferably 2’ by 3’) enlarged from the DESH Publication "You could be facing a major takeover bid...by AIDS". Three smaller copies of the same poster (11" by 8" ) for use in small group discussion. Newsprint and markers for each of the three groups.

Procedure:

1. 1. Ask participants to divide themselves into three groups of not more than 8 members each. If there are more than 24 participants invite some to act as "resource persons" or "advisors" to the management of the industries in crisis. As such they can offer their services to all three subgroups.
2. Place the large poster where all can see and hand out the smaller copies to the three groups for closer study. Explain that the picture shows members of an industrial concern facing a crisis because of HIV/AIDS.
3. Request the participants to study their pictures closely enough to identify different characters involved in the crisis situation (For example: a sick worker, other workers in the same category of work, a supervisor, an industrial manager, etc., etc.) Group members should feel free to invent names, designations, and roles for any of the figures shown in the picture and to add other figures if they so wish.
4. Each member of the subgroup should then select one of the characters in the picture and visualize how that person would feel about the situation and about others involved in the crisis -- what each one may be thinking, feeling, hoping, worrying about, demanding, blaming or denying responsibility.
5. They should explain their roles to each other so that they can synchronize their acting plan.
6. When ready they should act out a scene based on the picture and their own life experiences.
7. At any appropriate point they can throw out a question or a comment to the audience and invite their advice on handling the crisis.
8. Each group in turn should enact the situation through role-play if they are comfortable doing so. If not, you can invite any group to volunteer to enact the role-play and the others to comment on it.
9. In conclusion the three groups should pool their ideas together to come up with possible solutions for the crisis at different stages and at different policy levels.